Junque Jewelry or Junque-ology...you decide.

Necklace Organizer...round one.

I make and have a lot of necklaces. I have a jewelry box that I don't love. It doesn't organize well, and the spot to hang necklaces is down the back, so you can't see them unless you stand over the box, peering in. It's just not convenient.

I've been toying with the idea for a way to hang my necklaces so that they are all visible, and yet compact. Here's what I did.

I had an old framed cork-board & some tiny J hooks (or coffee cup hooks). Viola!

Yes, it's another crappy cell phone pic, but I'll take a better one at a later date. I promise!

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but I need to jazz it up a bit. I want to paint the frame and paper the cork-board with some pretty paper.  I'm waiting until after I re-paint my bedroom, though, so I can match it to the new wall color.  Then I will post an update here!

Why would I post an unfinished project here, you might ask? Well, I think I have a good reason. One, I put making this necklace board for months, even though I really needed it. My brain was swirling with the "I can't-s"  as in, "I can't do that because I haven't picked out the pretty paper," and "I can't pick out the paper until I paint the walls in the room,"  and so on. I'm a master of procrastination for this very reason.  So I stopped, did the what I needed to get the quick fix, and the pretty comes when it comes.

That's my new Junque-ology rule to live by.  I hope you like it.

Junque Jewelry

I wear a lot of necklaces during the week, most of which I’ve made over the years. There’s one necklace that I didn’t make, but has a great homemade flair to it. I'm sure that's why I like it. It is a silver wire-wrapped heart, suspended diagonally on a snake chain. You can tell the artist shaped the heart over some sort of form, probably something water soluble so it could be melted out by soaking. Or possibly using something flammable like cork clay, because the silver wire has been heat treated to become inflexible. This necklace was my grandmother’s, she and I shared the same passion for hand crafted wearable art.

 

I wear it fairly often and as a result, it’s become quite tarnished. 

it's hard to see the tarnish on the heart, but it's there, trust me!

Now, over the years, I’ve been giving various sorts of jewelry cleaners to try, and I hate messing with them. I don’t know the chemicals they have, and they usually still take a certainly amount of buffing or scrubbing to get clean anyway. I don’t know about you, but I hate spending money on a product that claims to be a breeze to use, and you still have to put your elbow grease into it anyway.  I’d rather pay next to nothing, use a more natural product that I know the ingredients of, especially if I’m going to have to use my elbows to clean it anyway.

 

So, I’d heard rumors about toothpaste, but never tried it before. but I thought it might be worth a try. Being cautious, though, I decided to check the interwebs to see if there were any warnings, and there were several. Toothpastes can have an abrasive reaction to fine silver, or silver-plated items, causing them to get scratched. While this might not be a problem for some things, it's better to be safe than sorry. So I decided to take a gander at other "natural" ways to take the tarnish off of silver, and I cam across  What I found was AWESOME! A quick, easy, safe, and CHEAP way to do what I wanted.


I spot-checked the method from a couple of different sites, and I'll list them at the end for you, if you want them, oh gentle readers.

How to Make a Silver Polishing Dip

• a disposable pie tin OR a glass baking dish with a sheet of aluminum foil
• 1 tablespoon of baking soda
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• at least one cup of steaming hot (but not boiling) water

1. Line the glass dish with aluminum foil (or if you are using the disposable pie tin, skip)
2. add the hot water, baking soda, and salt. 
3. Still until dissolved (it will fizz...no worries)
4. Drop your item(s) into the water
5. Check after a couple of minutes. Leave in longer of there's still more tarnishing to be taken away.
6. Remove, dry, and polish. Viola!

glass bowl & tin foil

heart pendant, getting dipped

all bright & shiny!

**Please be aware that this method of cleaning may not be appropriate for jewelry with precious or semi-precious stones in it. **



Sources:


Making a Silver Polishing Dip from About.com


Rena's Klingenberg's How to Clean Tarnished Silver Jewelry